I attended the Performance Racing Industry show in Orlando on Thursday. It has about 1,100 exhibitors and was expecting a crowd of about 35,000 through Saturday. It’s all about racing and you can find everything from safety equipment and green initiatives (including a series that plans to will run electric race cars) to special fluids that will make your engine run faster and NASCAR teams (including DEI, RCR, Roush-Yates and such).

 Anyway, ran into a few people fans might recall.

One was Ken Schrader. He told me that after he races this weekend, he will have competed in 82 races this calendar year. That’s down from the 119 he ran two years ago but is still quite impressive.

 Anyway, we talked about his schedule, the Cup series and more. Here’s a bit of what Schrader had to tell me.

Why “only’’ 82 races this year?

 SCHRADER: We didn’t go just every place that there was a race. We went more where (sponsor) Federated wanted us to go.

 What will you do in 2010?

 SCHRADER: I’d like to run the Truck or ARCA car more. We’re going to run some races in both of them with Federated and Federated sponsors all the dirt car races. Now, we’ve still got some cars that … we’re renting out to other people. We’ll have two cars at Daytona for the ARCA race. Bill Baird and Josh Richards (will drive). Josh Richards won the World of Outlaw late model championship. Really promising. He’s 21. We’ve tested him a couple of times and ran him in one Camping World East race. He did awesome. ... Going fast in circles. That’s it. That’s all he thinks about (and why Schrader likes him).

With all the racing you do, what kind of young talent do you see out there?

 SCHRADER: There’s a lot of good ones. Not a lot good ones that know how to put the car together and do all of that. And so many of them, they’re 17 pulling in with a tractor-trailer and three full-time guys. It’s like, “Come on, this isn’t real.’

 Is that the new racer?

 SCHRADER: There’s always some that don’t. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Any time I talk to (Joey) Logano or I see him in interviews, he makes me happy because that smile and attitude. He’s having fun doing it. I get that.

 He hasn’t been jaded yet. It’s not a job yet.

 SCHRADER: I was there (in Cup) for years and it never was a job.

 Lot of people it gets to be a job

SCHRADER: Then they ought to do something else. If you want to drive a race car and you make it to the Cup level and you’ve got complaints, Bill France (used to say), “Hey, you don’t have to race here. There’s a lot of places you can go.’

 What do you think of Kyle Busch’s talent? Is he his generation’s best racer even after only a few years in Cup?

 SCHRADER: I definitely think he has talent. I’m a Kyle fan. I’m a fan of most of the kids. But, when he harnesses his attitude a little bit, that will help him on track more too because it will make everybody working on the cars in a little different mood. I guess it just happens when you get older and you see (stuff) that (upsets you). I don’t know want to hear how p---- off you are because you run second in a Nationwide race. I don’t want to hear it.

 But fans want emotion and feeling. Wouldn’t people like it that a driver is upset with finishing 2^nd whether it’s a Nationwide race or late model race or something else?

 SCHRADER: You can be disappointed. Yes. You shouldn’t be jumping up and down, (and say) “Hey, the world is wonderful, I run second.’ You should be disappointed. I mean p---- off and should have done that, should have done that, well, then you should have won the … race. That’s something that our sport needs more of. That’s why Tony and Kyle are two of the guys, but that’s what I mean.’’

Another blast from the past.

I ran into former Cup car owner Mark Melling. He’s the son of Harry Melling and he took over the family’s race team after his father. I’ll never forget the day years ago when Melling and Ray Evernham announced that Evernham’s team with Bill Elliott would have the No. 9 _ a number Elliott made famous with Melling and those Fords. It was a memorable day because of the emotions Mark Melling went through. He called it a tough decision, passing along his family’s heirloom and even admitted he struggled to sleep the night before the announcement, wondering if he made the right decision.

Well, I ran into him Thursday and with the No. 9 returning to Ford with Richard Petty Motorsports moving to Ford in 2010 in its merger with Yates Racing. Melling was pleased.

“That’s pretty cool,’’ said Melling, whose family parts business has grown overseas. “It’s kind of back to where it belongs. It’s nice to see that.’’

Another thing about Melling is he was the guy who unleashed Chad Knaus on the world of NASCAR. Knaus had been at Hendrick Motorsports, part of Jeff Gordon’s crew and working under Ray Evernham when Melling went looking for a crew chief. He hired Knaus, giving Knaus his first crew chief job, working with Stacy Compton with the single-car team. That was back in 2000. Knaus stayed there until returning to Hendrick Motorsports to be Jimmie Johnson’s crew chief in 2002.

Melling on Knaus and the story behind hiring him:

 “He was an intense guy and he got put into the right situation. It’s not totally shocking to me that he’s done that well. When we won the poles (at plate tracks) that’s all about the car, so, obviously, he was putting together the right pieces back then. You could see he had the sense. The only problem that I had was I didn’t have the depth of the team. When you’re a little team, you have to worry about finance. I had to talk with him about budgets and talk with him about hiring and firing people. He couldn’t always concentrate right on the car. He had worry about running the business. I think when he got to Rick (Hendrick’s) place, he could laser focus on making the car go fast. Four championships is still hard to believe. Who do you expect to win four championships? That’s pretty impressive.

“Ray helped me with (hiring Knaus). I said, “Ray, I need a crew chief over here. He said, “Well, I’ve got two guys that are developmental, but I don’t have the use for both of them but they both need to be crew chiefs (in 2000). He kind of hooked me up with Chad. He helped make that all happen. So, I went and interviewed him. It was good. (Ray) helped me out finding the right guy.’’

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Mark Dyer is a name you might know. He’s among those at IMG representing Danica Patrick. A time before that, though, he worked at NASCAR and is credited with creating the Chase. So, to some fans he’s a genius. To others, well, they probably think of him as evil.

Still, Dyer brings a perspective that is unique. I ran into him in Orlando and while we did talk Danica, we did discuss the Chase. While Brian France has said that no one could have predicted how Jimmie Johnson would dominate the Chase, there have been complaints from some fans about the Chase even as it has evolved from going from 10 to 12 drivers, issuing bonus points for wins in the regular season and how it reset the points before the Chase.

Is there a way to Jimmie-proof the Chase? Or are there changes that could be considered to make things even tighter?

DYER: No one is saying that Jimmie Johnson is not a deserving champion in each of these four years. Or Tony Stewart before him or Kurt Busch before him. What the Chase makes you do is perform at crunch time. And that’s what we’ve seen the most extraordinary case of in the history of the sport with Jimmie doing that the last four years. Because the Chase is new, when an NFL team goes on a dynastic run, everybody is not screaming for the format to change necessarily. I think because the format was changed after all those years of the old Winston Cup system, I think it’s fair for people to suggest changes and I would think that NASCAR, they look at everything every year. I know there are some pretty dramatic concepts out there that could make it interesting. Whatever system you use, you want a legitimate champion that people, that the competitors and the fans can respect and say, “That’s a champion performance.’

“Right now, it’s over the last 10 races. Should it be fewer Chase races? Or more? I don’t know. That’s an important quality to have about your champion, that it’s not accidental. The extraordinary thing Jimmie has done is have really good seasons each year the first 26 but they elevate and every great playoff team, every great champion in professional sports finds a way to elevate in the postseason. If you look at points (scored) per race in the first 26, it’s good but it’s not great. They elevate.

“There’s different ways of making the Chase better in trying to de-Jimmize the Chase or can some of these teams figure out a way to elevate or gain over those last 10 races and score more points to keep pace with the 48. They’re consistency has been mind-boggling, being consistently good.

“We should spend a fair amount of time praising the greatness of what we’re seeing instead of wanting to change the format because I’ll tell you what, I’m not so sure whatever the format you put together, that Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson aren’t going to figure out. If you went back to the old format, I wouldn’t bet against them. I think their attitude is, “Tell us what the rules are guys and we’re going to go beat you.’’